Systems are known for tracking persons, such as employees, by using computer-based telephone tracking and reporting systems. For this purpose, a computer-based tracking and reporting service may have a number of customers, each of which is a company with employees that provide services to a client. For example, the customer may be a nurses association, the employees of which are nurses who provide nursing services to a patient at the patient's home. In the parlance of the computer-based tracking service, the nurses association is the customer, the nurse is the “employee” or “caller”, and the person receiving the service from the employee-caller is the “client”. Tracking services are also useful for non-commercial applications. For instance, it can be used by prison systems to determine if a parolee has met with a parole officer.
Ordinarily the employee-caller is scheduled to provide services at the client's address at a specified date for a specified amount of time. The nurses association (i.e., the customer) may want to track the nurse's time of arrival, time of departure, etc. at the client's location in order to have a record of the nurse's activity and amount to be paid to the nurse for the nursing services and/or to the nurses association by a medical insurance company.
In one prior system, the employee calls a telephone number when the employee arrives at the client's location. When the call is received, the Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) is detected and the Automatic Number Identification (ANI) is also detected. The DNIS is compared with a customer database and the employee is requested to enter the appropriate data. The entered data, the DNIS, the ANI, and other information such as the time and date of the call is recorded and saved. However, on occasion the employee, caller, may enter the wrong caller identification, and the system will record an incorrect caller identification code and will be unable to determine the correct identification of the caller.
In another system, a computer-based system is provided for collecting data from callers, including a customer's database corresponding to a customer's Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS) and in which system the caller has an identification code. When a call is received, the DNIS is detected and is compared with the customer's database to determine the data to collect during the call. If a caller identification code is required, then the caller identification code is obtained and the caller identification code is compared, via the computer, with a check digit algorithm without referencing a caller identification code database. After the call is terminated, a call record is created for the received call.
Now that cellular, or mobile phones are in wide use, however, it is difficult to determine the location of the employee through utilization of the previous methods. Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system, which can verify, regardless of the use of cellular technology, that the employee is at the proper location, at the proper time.
Further, many locations where the employee is expected to be do not have a telephone or contact device enabling the employee to make a call, or a computer enabling the employee to log in. Such locations, which are void of any contact device, including telephones and computers, do not enable data to be forwarded as to the location being visited. However, there is a need to verify that the employee has arrived at a selected location at a selected time and also to verify when the employee has left this selected location.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the description proceeds. It is to be understood, however, that although the terms “telephone” or “telephonic” are used for convenience herein to refer to the medium upon which communication is achieved, these terms are intended to include cable transmission, satellite transmission, cellular transmission, Internet transmission, and any other type of transmission upon which communication can be achieved.